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Commander Focus #27: Sturdy

Fury of Caesar

Single attack, attack 5 times continuously and each attack will deal 50% S-ATK damage and 1M holy damage (ignores defense). After the attack, it has a 65% chance to grant self with a shield which can immune damage for 2 attacks, lasting for 1 round. Note: If the target dies during the attacks, then Sturdy will attack the next target with the rest attacks. No matter how many times the target gets attacked, the accumulator will only increase once.

In this week handbook I want to discuss with you about the newest red striker Sturdy. It's strange for me that so few people get really excited about him and told me that they wanted to buy Sturdy, but, to be very honest with you, I've seen very few players that bought and invested on him and regretted. Maybe players didn't get very excited about him because they associate him too much with Aethos, but, in my opinion, despite of the multiple shots special they are very different, especially considering the new items, commanders and skills in the game.

Analyzing his attributes we can see a great offensive power. He has a high critical chance, a high penetration and a tremendous Hit Rate. Here things get interesting, as his special makes him fire 5 consecutive shots with 50% special power (in the game the description uses s-attack, but I think this is not a good translation). If you sum the 5 shots you can get a 250% modifier in his special power and that's awesome in a striker! But do various shots is good and bad at the same time, as you have separated chances in each shot to make a critical, to receive a miss or to be blocked. For example: a normal commander special being critical will make full critical damage, but sturdy can make 1 critical shot and the other 4 not critical. But in the other hand a normal commander releasing a noncritical special have no other chance in that specific shot to release a critical, although Sturdy cannot get a the critical on the first shot, but 4 critical shots in the remaining. As he have very good attributes in the offensive part he normally is not blocked or misses a shot, so, in most of the cases, this may not be a problem. We can think, for example, that Sturdy has 5 chances to hit Carolina with her buff *edit*(I'll try to confirm this part, as I've seen a video that Sturdy missed the first shot and didn't fire the other 4).

Keeping the 5 shots 5 chances to trigger any effect in mind we can compare Sturdy to Aethos. I believe this is basically one of the two things they have in common and when Aethos was released long time ago it was the only thing different about a commander that special fires multiples hits. Although, when Tap created Cryptor the multiple attacks became interesting, as with 4 or less attacks Aethos and, of course, Sturdy, can remove the shield that protects against the lethal shot and kill him with the remaining shot(s). This is obviously applied to Louise.

But Tap would not just release a simple evolution of Aethos. They put in Sturdy the ability I think most of the players didn't understand why Aethos doesn't have: if he kills his target with less than 5 shots the remaining will hit other targets. And here we have the biggest differential about Sturdy on the whole game, as it's possible for him to even shot all the enemies despites of their positions in the battle field. I've lost several battles by one Sturdy special that just killed all my commanders. This happens especially when Sturdy is equipped with a lvl 2 sword and has less than 25% HP, so he receives a 125% attack bonus, that is destructive on a strong striker like him.

The multiple shot special is also great against Raksha as he can kill the protector revealing his allies and continue to hit other enemies that are no longer invisible. This ability is even better when combined with Dark Flagship ability to remove buffs, that will remove Rakshas damage reduction shield. In my opinion Dark Flag and Sturdy are one of the recent best offensive combinations in the game and I normally try to avoid fighting them. :P

Another offensive ability Sturdy has is that every shot in his special has 1 mi holy damage, that ignores defense, but this was kind of fast nerfed when Tap released new reshape levels, that, in higher levels, can give in total more than 5 mi HP. Although this is still very important when Sturdy meets an opponent with high defensive power.

To finish talking about his offensive power I'll say that, in my humble opinion, Sturdy's special gets more effective when the battle is in the middle or in the end, as it tends to have more enemies with few hp and he can kill a lot of them in very different positions.

In the defensive area Sturdy has very poor attributes. He has very low anticritical, block and dodge, so, to compensate, tap gave him a 65% chance release a crazy shield that completely ignores 2 damage sources. This is an incredible ability and together with another defensive buff likes Louise's shield Sturdy can lasts really long in the battle and sustain the most powerful attacks.

Before Tap released Caroline (future handbook topic and nowadays a must have in my opinion) I was thinking a lot about buying Sturdy for my team. I think he is really strong and you can see this in CCC top 32, that some not high level players like Tuker are qualified and I believe the main commander in his tactic is the our red striker. I get really impressed about how he manages to take the max of Sturdy in his tactics when I fight against him.

What about your opinion regarding Sturdy? Are you among the players that think he is impressive or that think he is not a must have? Are you planning to get him? Are you having trouble against him? Do you want to add something I forgot about him? Come on and let's talk about this amazing striker!

I really liked him pre-level 110 reshape release. Now, I don't really like holy damage on commanders. Why release it as part of their skill if you just buff HP down the line?
Otherwise, a VERY powerful striker for PvP. I have seen him take down VERY powerful fleets by himself.
If only he regenerated accumulator like Fitzgerald

I really liked him pre-level 110 reshape release. Now, I don't really like holy damage on commanders. Why release it as part of their skill if you just buff HP down the line?
Otherwise, a VERY powerful striker for PvP. I have seen him take down VERY powerful fleets by himself.
If only he regenerated accumulator like Fitzgerald

It does not impress me, yes he has awsome hite rate and penetration but that's all. As you all said, with new reshape he isn't a one shoot killer like FD was at the beginning.

Fitz is much more powerfull in my opinion and offer assistance since he decrease S atk. Sturdy offers only domage.

BUT if you combine it with another stricker you can have volkof and in this case sturdy is really good friend.

Caroline is much more stranger than him.

Thats true about Sturdy, Caroline will be longer but on primus tap will add soon more hit rate, i think next commander will be rover with better atributes and sayks then dor for combat Caroline, for Sturdy the new reshape its enough.